


tell me you'll stay (never ever go away)

by connorswhisk



Series: losers/lovers [5]
Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: :'''), Bullying, Character Study, F/M, also there is a small reference to another king book in this, and i think that's beautiful, anyway this is about benverly but, ben and beverly love each other so much you have no idea i'm, ben hanscom drinks respecting women juice, here have 20k words of ben hanscom fic, its also about ben growing to love himself, see if you can spot it, ughhhhhh, why? because im a lovebot and i can
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 21:31:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21204407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/connorswhisk/pseuds/connorswhisk
Summary: ~ ~Ben thinks that if he ever falls in love, whoever it is probably won’t love him back. Probably because he’s big and fat, and he’s nerdy ‘cause he likes to read books, and he usually keeps to himself because he’s got no one to talk to except his Mama and the librarian, and he blushes when the teacher so much as calls on his hand, even though he almost always gets the answer right.But, Ben thinks, If the person I love didn’t love me back, I think it would be ok. I’d understand why not. And as long as they would be happy, I would be happy.~ ~





	tell me you'll stay (never ever go away)

**Author's Note:**

> i seriously did not mean to make this one so long but honestly? who's complaining? certainly not me
> 
> title from please don't go, girl by new kids on the block

Benjamin Hanscom (Benny to his mother, Ben to his friends, if he had any friends) is five years old when his dad leaves.

He doesn’t understand it at the time. He’s five years old, he’s only just learning how to read, and his dad is leaving, and Ben doesn’t understand it. Not at all.

Everything had seemed ok, at least at first. Dad would go off to work in one of the many electronics factories in Dallas, like so many men in the city do. He would come home every night, to Ben and Mama, and would greet them with a kiss (Mama) and a tickle on the belly (Ben). Mama would have dinner ready, and they’d eat. Mama would put Ben to bed after giving him a bath, and then she and Dad would stay up and watch TV. That’s how the Hanscoms had lived for a while.

And then they stop living that way.

Dad stumbles in the door one night, later than he normally would, the roast chicken and green beans all cold by now, and he smells _funny, _like how Mama does when she spritzes on her perfume from the cheap plastic bottle, but not the same. This is a different smell, sickly sweet instead of comforting, nauseating where Mama’s musk is friendly.

Maybe Ben just hadn’t noticed before, or understood, but he suddenly realizes that lately, Mama hasn’t been kissing Dad when he comes home anymore. And there’s always blankets on the sofa, like maybe someone’s been sleeping there instead of in his bed.

This night, this night is the one that finally makes poor Arlene Hanscom break, and she starts screaming at Dad, screaming nasty words and throwing things at him, like couch cushions and handfuls of mashed potatoes, and Dad just stands there silently and lets her do it, doesn’t even flinch. He doesn’t look angry. He just looks sad, and tired.

Mama yells that he’s “screwing his secretary,” and Ben has no idea what _that _means, but he knows it can’t be good. “You’re screwing your whore secretary!” Mama shouts, and Ben decides that _screwing _must mean something _really bad._

Dad leaves that night. Packs up his things and walks out the door, still covered in clumps of potatoes, with stray green beans littering his graying hair. Ben doesn’t see him again for a really long time.

Aunt Yvonne comes and stays with Ben and Mama for a while after that. She sits next to Mama on the sofa and rubs her back while Mama cries. She cooks them dinner. She cleans up the house. Aunt Yvonne is gone during the day most of the time, but when she comes back, she always has a present for Ben, a licorice whip, or a set of jacks, and one time, a library card.

Ben’s never had a library card in his life, and is still learning how to read, but Aunt Yvonne tells him that it’s time he has one. She says that any young kid should have a library card, so they can learn as much as possible. Any other child of five would probably find that lame, but Ben likes the idea. Ben _likes _learning, and reading, while he still struggles with it, is the best.

“I’ll take you to the library, Benny-boy,” Aunt Yvonne says. “That’s where all the magic happens.”

“Ok,” Ben replies cheerily, and he’s actually _excited, _and Ben only really gets excited when Mama makes cherry pie, or when _Dallas _comes on TV (Ben doesn’t always get what’s happening on _Dallas,_ but there’s usually some fun car chases, and he also likes it because he lives right where it’s all happening).

When Ben first walks into the library, hand held tight in his aunt’s, it’s like a switch is flipped on in his brain.

There are books, books _everywhere, _and Ben wants to get his hands on as many as possible. Aunt Yvonne takes him to the kid’s section, with all the colorful picture books, and she tells Ben that when he’s older, he can go to the grownup shelves.

“Now, you stay here and pick out a couple of kiddie books,” Aunt Yvonne says, patting Ben’s shoulder. “I’m going to go find something of my own to read.” And she disappears into the stacks.

Ben spends absolute _ages _picking out the books he wants, and he ultimately chooses three: _Fox In Socks, Corduroy, _and _Miss Suzy. _He likes _Fox In Socks, _because it’s got a ton of cool tongue twisters, and _Miss Suzy, _because it’s about a squirrel and toy soldiers made of tin, but he thinks he likes _Corduroy _the best. _Corduroy _is the story of a little stuffed bear who is all alone in a department store. A girl wants to buy him, but her mother won’t let her, because Corduroy’s overalls are missing a button. So that night, he goes off in the store to find his lost button, because he knows it’s the only thing that will keep him from being lonely.

Ben feels a lot like Corduroy. He can’t explain why he does, or how he knows, but he does. He likes that, at the end of the book, the little girl brings Corduroy home, anyway, and gives him a new button of her own. That makes Ben very happy.

When Aunt Yvonne takes Ben home, him clutching his picture books to his chest, her with a new steamy romance novel, he immediately rushes to show Mama the books he’s borrowed. She smiles, but it looks a little empty. Most of Mama’s smiles have looked pretty empty since Dad went away.

“I just don’t understand,” Aunt Yvonne says, baffled. “I’ve never seen a kid so excited about _books._”

“Well, it’s Benny,” Mama says, smiling tiredly at Ben as he shows off his new findings to his toys. “He’s not the same as all the other kids. He’s special.”

“You know,” Aunt Yvonne shakes her head, mystified. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a child so excited about _anything._”

And maybe that’s true. Because Ben while he’s playing jacks, or hopscotch, or Go Fish, and Ben while he’s watching _Dallas, _or _The Brady Bunch, _or _The Flintstones _is different than Ben when he’s reading more and more books. Those other things he does ‘cause he’s a kid, and he’s supposed to, and he sure _likes _doing those things, of course he does. But Ben with books...it’s like he just keeps going and going.

Ben reads story after story, page after page. He goes from Dr. Seuss to Maurice Sendak, Maurice Sendak to Shel Silverstein, Shel Silverstein to Roald Dahl, and he simply doesn’t stop.

He doesn’t think he could if he tried.

And Mama is a little amazed by how much Ben likes to read, but Ben doesn’t let that faze him.

Because when Ben’s reading, he’s in a different world. And sometimes, a different world is just where he wants to be.

Once Ben turns six, Mama gets a half-way steady job as a waitress. The pay isn’t great, but it’s enough that Aunt Yvonne doesn’t have to stay with them anymore.

It’s not the same, without Dad around, but they get by. They manage.

By the time Ben turns eight, he’s been in school for a while, and he has..._mixed feelings _about it. He loves learning, almost as much as he loves reading. His teachers like him, and he gets good marks. In the third grade, his teacher, Mr. Hudson, teaches the class all about Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous architect, and Ben starts to idolize him, just a little bit. Ben thinks that the Fallingwater house is one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen in his life.

On the other hand, the kids at school are not so great. They’re not nice to Ben. And this is for one simple reason, one Ben understands all too well.

Ben is fat.

No point in sugarcoating it (_Why should you? _Ben’s inner doubts ask. _You’d eat that, too._), Ben is fat. He’d always been chubby as a baby, but then he started to get older, and instead of going away, the chub only expanded, blowing up like a balloon. Ben can’t exactly help it. It’s genetic, his mom says, but she’s curvy and Dad was just stocky. Neither of them are _fat._

Ben feels like maybe he should try and work on it, go on a diet, or exercise more or something, but he’s eight years old, and it doesn’t bother him _that_ much yet. His insecure, hormone-induced self-hatred won’t show up for a few more years. Ben doesn’t _like_ the fact that he’s fat, but it doesn’t keep him awake at night.

“You’re not fat, Benny,” Mama tells him kindly. “You’re just big-boned.”

But Mama’s words don’t discourage Ben from eating three servings at every dinner, and they don’t do anything to stop his fellow classmates’s remarks, either.

_“Out of the way, tubby.”_

_“Move your big butt, fatso.”_

_“Go away, we don’t want to play with a tub of lard like you.”_

These are the things Ben hears on a daily basis. The teachers don’t know too much about it, and when they do hear it, they tell the kids to stop. But the kids don’t stop, and it grates away at something inside of Ben.

The other issue, made even worse by the relentless digs at his weight, is that Ben is eight years old, and has no friends, none at all.

Ben wouldn’t call himself lonely. If you asked Ben if he was lonely, he would look at you all surprised-like, like the thought had never occurred to him before, and that’s because it _hasn’t. _Ben doesn’t _feel _lonely, so the word doesn’t pop into his head while he watches the other kids kick around a soccer ball at recess with envy, while he sits alone under a tree and reads.

Ben doesn’t realize it at the time, but he doesn’t feel lonely because he’s never been anything _but. _He has nothing to compare his solitude to, so he doesn’t recognize it for what it is.

Mama often asks him about what he did after school before curfew, where he went, what he got up to. Ben will tell her he went to the movies, or to the candy shop, or the park, or (most often) to the library, and Mama will nod and smile.

“Good for you to get out and do things,” she says. “I know you’re a good kid, Benny. I bet you and your friends have a great time together.”

Ben doesn’t have the heart to tell Mama that he doesn’t _have _any friends. The fact that she doesn’t know that already, or that she’s never asked, tells Ben that maybe she doesn’t know him that well after all. Maybe she doesn’t care so much.

It gives Ben a hollow feeling. He doesn’t think Mama’s cared for much for a while. Even though it’s been years since Dad left, Mama is often distant, distracted. Ben loves her, of _course _he loves her, but sometimes he wishes she would make more of an effort to get to know her son, to stay constant with his life.

Then he feels guilty for thinking so, because Ben doesn’t know what Mama’s going through. He didn’t have the love of his life walk away from him, to be with someone else, and he can’t even begin to comprehend what that would be like. Probably terrible, and soul-crushing. Maybe it makes sense that Mama still isn’t over Dad.

Ben thinks that if he ever falls in love, whoever it is probably won’t love him back. Probably because he’s big and fat, and he’s nerdy ‘cause he likes to read books, and he usually keeps to himself because he’s got no one to talk to except his Mama and Mr. Jones, the librarian, and he blushes when the teacher so much as calls on his hand, even though he almost always gets the answer right.

_But, _Ben thinks, _If the person I love didn’t love me back, I think it would be ok. I’d understand why not. And as long as they would be happy, I would be happy._

Ben likes to imagine himself a romantic, however corny that sounds. It sounds _really _corny, but it’s true, he is one. He doesn’t read many romance books (mostly because he’s too embarrassed to check any out), but he’s seen movies. Guy meets girl, guy falls in love with girl, girl falls in love with guy, they kiss, the end. It’s a pretty simple formula, but even at eight, Ben _wants _it. He falls asleep at night and dreams of someone like that for him, someone pretty, with an even prettier personality, smiling at him, holding his hand, and he wakes up red in the face, stomach flopping around his insides like a jackrabbit.

Ben is young, but he understands love more than he knows, and not just romantic love. All kinds. Even without friends, he knows how platonic love works. And he _wants _it. He _yearns _for it.

To have someone in his life, some person or people like that, whether Ben’s in love with them or they’re just his friends, would make Ben happy enough to burst. He hopes someday he finds those people. Because when he does, he’s going to give them everything there is to give. His loves will be like his Fallingwater, a legacy he can build, something he can remember and that others will remember, too.

Ben is young, and he’s fat, and he’s shy, and he’s awkward, and he’s lonely without even realizing it, and the kids at school don’t like him much at all, but Ben Hanscom _loves, _and that’s enough.

“We’re moving to Maine,” Mama tells Ben, and that’s when his life starts to really get going, though he doesn’t know it at the time.

“What?” Ben’s confused. He’s only just walked in the door from yet another Thursday afternoon spent at the library. Mama hadn’t even said _hi, _she’d just started in immediately.

“I’ve decided,” Mama says, picking at the white lace edge of the tablecloth. “That we could use a change of scene. Somewhere different. A new beginning. I’m going up to Maine this weekend, to this town called Derry, and I’m getting interviewed for a receptionist position at a hotel there.”

_Derry. _He’s never even _heard_ of Derry before. The name gives Ben an uneasy feeling, a pit in his too big stomach, though he doesn’t know why.

“But,” Ben flounders slightly. “Why Maine?” Maine feels like the farthest place from Dallas in the world. Ben would have to leave everything here behind. Aunt Yvonne and Ben’s new cousin Jimmy, school, the library...

Then again, they can talk with Aunt Yvonne on the telephone. The kids here at school don’t even like Ben, and there will always be other libraries, libraries in Maine...and if Ben makes a good impression in Derry, he might not get bullied like he does here, and a receptionist position sounds like it would pay better than a waitress job. And here is also where Dad left them for his secretary...

Maybe being far away from Dallas is just what the Hanscoms need.

Mama shrugs, like she hasn’t given it much thought, like she’d just thrown darts at a map of the U.S. and took note of where they’d stuck. “I’ve been to Maine before. It’s pretty up there. And a small town would be a change of pace from regular old big-city Dallas, don’t you think?”

“I guess so,” Ben says. “That doesn’t sound so bad, actually.” Even if the name of the town puts Ben on edge.

“Great.” Mama smiles, and it looks like a real smile, something not often seen on her face. If Ben hadn’t been completely convinced before, this would have definitely done the trick.

“Ok.” Ben goes to put his stuff down in his room.

“Benny,” Mama says, and he stops. Turns back and looks at her.

“Yeah, Mama?”

“I’m sorry you’ll have to leave your friends behind,” Mama says, frowning guiltily, forehead crinkling.

Suddenly Ben thinks of a word that he’s never thought of before. At least, not in the context of himself. It flashes into his mind, quickly, and it’s gone before he can really grasp its meaning.

_Lonely._

Ben blinks.

“It’s ok,” Ben says. “I’ll make new ones.” And he turns, and walks down the hall to his room.

Lonely.

Is he?

He has no friends here in Dallas, it’s true. Not even really any acquaintances, either.

But...that could _change._

Ben could make friends in Maine, couldn’t he? Like Mama said, it would be a new beginning. Nobody in Derry would have to know that Ben’s a nerd, not if he makes a good first impression. Maybe the kids up there are different. Small towns could have more loving communities, right? So, maybe he won’t get made fun of as much?

Maybe there’s some other lonely kid up in Derry, waiting for a friend, too. Maybe Ben could be that friend.

Yeah. Yeah.

No, Ben isn’t _lonely, _he’s...

He’s waiting. He’s waiting.

Mama gets the job, and two-and-a-half months later, she’s packing the last box into the back of the car.

“Come on, Benny,” she says, turning the keys. “Time for a new chapter of our lives.”

Hopefully. There’s almost two days worth of distance between Dallas and Derry.

Ben hopes it’s room for change.

It isn’t.

There is no change.

The scenery is different, sure. It’s a small town, not a big city. They’ve got a new apartment, and the kitchen window has a real nice view of the Kenduskeag river. Mama likes her new job, and it gives good pay. And the parks are nice, sure.

But school is the same. Ben had been hoping that that would be different more than anything else, but it’s not different, and that, well,

That sucks.

The teachers aren’t bad. Ben’s social studies teacher, Mrs. Douglas, is probably one of the most understanding women Ben has ever met. And Mr. Landes gives Ben some of his lunch when Ben’s gets stomped on, and Mrs. Ruff helps Ben after school if he doesn’t understand the math homework, and Mr. Avery, the janitor, helps Ben out when he gets shut in his locker, albeit with a sigh and heavy grumbling under his breath. So that’s nice.

Those things happen a lot, though. The lunch-stomping and the locker-shutting. Things aren’t bad here in Derry.

They’re worse.

Where once there was snide remarks and elephant noises when Ben walked to the front of the class, there is now tripping, and smacking, and punching, and pushing. Ben had tried to delude himself, had let himself believe that a small town would be more loving. Ha.

A small town, specifically _this _small town, is worse. A lot worse.

Derry doesn’t have the traces of Ben’s father. But Dallas didn’t have Henry Bowers.

And Jesus H., there’s a lot of him up here.

It’s just like, Ben can’t get away from Bowers, no matter how hard he tries. Imagine a kid, tall, skinny, muscles from years of farm-work bulging out of a sleeveless t-shirt, an ugly mullet, a bad temper, and daddy issues, and you’ve got Henry Bowers.

Ben thinks Bowers and his goons must have had a _field day_ when Ben Hanscom, not just a new kid, but a _fat _new kid, had plodded into school. Because ever since Ben’s first day, they’ve made it their mission to torment him. Ben can’t walk down the halls without getting tripped up. He has to be careful when he bikes home, for fear of being spotted by the bullies. Because when they catch him, it _hurts, _and Ben is starting to run out of excuses for his mother as to where all his cuts and bruises are coming from.

But the other thing, the worse thing, is that Ben still has no friends. None at all. He’d thought they might have liked him up here, but no one wants to hang out with the tubby boy, especially when said tubby boy is Henry Bowers’s favorite target, other than Mike Hanlon, of course.

And Ben doesn’t like to think it, but just before he falls asleep at night, the word comes back to him: _Lonely._

Mama doesn’t seem to notice. She thinks it’s great that they’ve started over, she loves her job, she loves the town. Ben doesn’t have the heart to tell her how he really feels.

See, there’s really only two good things about Derry for Ben. One is the library.

And the other is a girl.

Ben applies for a library card by his second day in town. He can’t help it. His book addiction simply can’t be sated.

And the thing is, Derry has a _really good public library. _Like, ridiculously so. The one in Dallas had been bigger, and had definitely had more books, but the Derry library just feels..._fuller, _in a way. More knowledgeable, though Ben doesn’t know why.

It’s nothing special. Just a normal library with a card catalogue and those corny posters about how reading is the better choice when up against the television. The stacks are dusty, and there’s hardly anyone in there. Ben almost never sees anyone from school, or really any kids at all.

And yet, he loves it. There seems to always be a book waiting there to satisfy his needs.There’s this big glass corridor that connects the adult and children’s buildings that Ben just adores, even though it’s either super hot or super cold in there, depending on the weather. And Mrs. Starrett, the head librarian who runs the circulation desk, is literally the nicest person (besides his own mother, of course) that Ben has ever met in his life. She doesn’t care that Ben is fat, just that he’s polite, and that he’s willing to learn, and so she helps Ben find the books he needs, and tells him about incoming orders. In short, she’s a sweet woman, definitely too sweet for a town the likes of Derry.

That’s just it, though. When Ben had first moved to town, he’d checked out a lot of books on Derry’s history, just to get a feel for the place he’d moved to. But this town...

It’s bad. Worse than bad, actually. The missing kids...the murder rates...and every few decades, some horrible event happens, and no one seems to notice. Or care.

Derry _itself _is a bad town. Ben had known that even from hearing the name. And you need only spend a day there to find that it's true.

Derry’s evil. Ben doesn’t understand why, he doesn’t understand _how, _but it is.

He hopes he isn’t the only one who realizes.

He thinks about this a lot, but not as much as he thinks about...the girl.

Well, she has a name. She has a name, and it’s beautiful. She has a name, and it’s Beverly Marsh.

Ben has social studies with her. Ben has social studies with Beverly Marsh, and on the first day of class, he looks at her and he falls in love just a little bit.

And as the year goes on, he falls more and more in love with her.

Beverly Marsh is everything. She’s got green eyes, like jade, and miles of bright red hair, and when it catches the sunlight just right, it looks like woven _fire._

Ben doesn’t talk to her a lot. Nothing really past the polite “hellos,” and “excuse mes,” and “sorrys.” But she’s _fascinating._

She tells Ben that his report on the War of 1812 is good, and Ben almost dies of embarrassment.

It’s the good kind of embarrassment, though. It isn’t mortification, it’s...bashfulness.

Beverly doesn’t have a good reputation, but Ben doesn’t, either, so maybe that’s ok.

“See, here’s the question,” Ben overhears Richie Tozier saying to Eddie Kaspbrak and Stan Uris on the way out of school one afternoon. “Which girl at school would you fuck?”

Stanley rolls his eyes. “I wouldn’t _fuck _anyone, not yet. We’re too young for that.”

Richie sticks his tongue out. “Aw, come on, Stanny, you’re no fun. What, do your parents make you wear a chastity belt or something?” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively. “Feel like giving me the key?”

“No. Beep-beep, Richie,” Stanley responds.

Richie wheels on Eddie next. “You, Eds? Any girls here give you a regular old boner?”

Eddie flushes, which is what Ben is doing, even just from eavesdropping on the conversation. “Wh-what?” Eddie squeaks. “No, _no. _I don’t, there’s no...there’s no girls, no.” And he looks fearful, like someone might laugh and call him girly-boy.

Richie shrugs. “Good. They don’t deserve your cuteness, anyway.”

“Shut up,” Eddie says. “What about you, Rich? Any girls you would fuck?”

Richie grins wolfishly. “Well, yeah. Your mom, for starters - “

“Shut _up!_”

“Come on, you guys are so _lame,_” Richie whines, and then -

“Haystack, my man, who would you fuck?”

Ben starts, and blushes. “Um,” he gets out. “Um, well, I, uh...um.”

“Spit it out,” Richie says, not unkindly. “You’re stuttering as much as Bill.”

Ben’s face burns even more. “I guess...I mean I wouldn’t...I wouldn’t have _sex _with a girl, but...”

“Then who do you think is the hottest girl at school?”

Ben knows his answer immediately. “Uh, Beverly...Beverly Marsh is...pretty, I think.”

And it’s _different _to say it out loud.

Richie raises his eyebrows. “Really? But don’t you think she’s a slut?”

“_Richie,_” Stanley hisses, though he isn’t disagreeing.

Ben shifts. “Well, I don’t think those rumors are true. Everyone says she’s super mean, but she’s always real nice to me.”

Richie blinks. “Ok. I guess she’s nice. You’re right.”

“Wait, what?” Eddie asks. “You think she’s _nice?_”

Richie shrugs. “She shared a smoke with me once.” And they’re off into another conversation as Eddie launches into a rant about the dangers of cigarettes, and by the time Bill Denbrough comes around with his bike, they’ve completely forgotten Ben is even there.

Ben thinks that he could be friends with them, maybe. They’re not mean.

He’s also never _had _friends before. And while he desperately wants them, he isn’t sure he’s ready.

But in the meantime,he can go to the library, and he can avoid Bowers and his friends at school, and he can read good books, and he can stare at Beverly Marsh’s hair, and he can doodle onto his notes,

_Beverly Hanscom._

_Beverly Hanscom._

and then he can crumple the paper up and throw it away at home for fear of someone at school finding it.

But the feeling Ben gets when he writes those words...it’s like exhilarating. He gets the same feeling when he’s listening to New Kids On the Block on his Walkman, and Beverly pops into his head while he’s doing it.

He would never tell her. But Ben Hanscom has a crush on Beverly Marsh.

That’s not right.

Try again.

Ben Hanscom is in love with Bev Marsh. And it just might kill him someday, but he never wants it to stop.

Ben wants to do something for Beverly.

He wants...he wants to _tell _her how he feels, but he also knows if he does that, he just might die. Because, even if in some bizarre topsy-turvy dreamscape, she _did _like him back, he’d probably combust anyway.

So, he wants to tell her, but he also wants to keep the secret under lock and key. Beverly can never find out, not ever, but Ben wants to shout it from the rooftops, but quietly. Just so she can hear it.

God, Ben’s never _felt _like this before. It’s...it’s..._terrifying, _in a way, but it’s also _beautiful._

In February, Ben even considers sending Beverly a valentine. A box of chocolates, or a rose, with a card with some sappy message in it. Ben’s a romantic, alright? While kids like Richie Tozier might call the holiday “stupid,” and “a load of ooey-gooey _shit,” _Ben thinks Valentine’s Day is the best holiday, besides maybe Christmas.

He doesn’t send her a valentine. The prospect is too scary. She would laugh in his face, and then Richie would laugh, and so would Stanley, and Eddie, and Bill Denbrough, and then Bowers and Hockstetter and Criss and Belch would find out, and they’d lose their _minds _laughing, you’d be able to hear it all the way in China, and then they’d descend on Ben like birds of prey.

At the end of the school day on Valentine’s Day, people pair off and head out with their boyfriends and girlfriends, the younger kids to go to the movies and french in the last row, the older kids to go screw in the backseats of their cars. Others, like Ben, just go home, alone and with no one’s hand to hold.

Ben has social studies for last period, and as soon as the bell rings he’s out of his seat, hoping to beat the rush so he can get out and go home, without running into Bowers on his way. He’s almost to the door when he hears a clatter, followed by cursing and giggling. Ben wheels around to see Beverly Marsh sprawled on the floor, surrounded by the contents of her pencil case. Greta Keene, the offending pusher, saunters out with a smirk and a final flick of her ponytail.

“Here, let me help you with that,” Ben says without even thinking about it, stooping down to help collect the scattered pens and pencils. Beverly raises her eyebrow at him.

“Why are you helping me?” she asks, sounding suspicious.

“Well...Well, I just wanted to be nice,” Ben responds. His heart is pounding in his chest.

“Think that if you help me you’ll get lucky? Is that it?” Beverly demands, voice laced with anger and hurt. “Lose your V-card on V-Day?”

Ben flushes, shaking his head quickly. “No! No, no, never, I...I don’t - I don’t want that, I don’t believe all the rumors about you, I just...”

Something in Beverly’s eyes seems to soften. “Oh. Ok. Thanks.”

There’s a tense silence.

Beverly collects the rest of her things and stands. “Well, thanks, New Kid. Sorry that I...I’m sorry that I snapped.”

Ben stands too, face turning redder still. “It’s ok.”

She smiles.

Ben feels like floating right there.

“Bye, New Kid. See ya.”

“Bye, Beverly!” he calls after her retreating form, and the last thing he sees before she disappears is the whisker of her ponytail against the doorframe, and then she’s gone.

Ben allows himself one moment to sigh wistfully before starting for the door again.

He never gets there, because someone clears their throat.

Ben jumps. Mrs. Douglas is still seated behind her desk, and he’d forgotten about her completely.

“So,” she asks, grinning slyly. “Beverly Marsh, huh?”

Ben blushes. He stares at his feet.

“It’s ok, Benjamin,” Mrs. Douglas says. “Everyone has crushes at your age.”

Ben nods, pink in the ears, still not meeting her eyes.

“Since you’re here,” she says, mercifully changing the subject. “I was wondering if you could help me grade papers? I have a lot to get through, and if you’re not busy, Benjamin, I’d appreciate the help.”

Ben does look up at her then, and smiles. “Sure thing, Mrs. Douglas.” He likes Mrs. Douglas, and grading papers could be the perfect way for Ben to stay safe from bullies.

He stays for a long time, marking up tests and textbook questions with a red pen Mrs. Douglas lets him use, never thinking any less or more of the student in question, regardless of their grade. Except for Henry Bowers, who Ben is glad to see is failing social studies rapidly (he feels a little guilty for thinking so, but it doesn’t go undeserved). Beverly, he notices, is passing, and that makes Ben feel proud for no reason, no reason at all.

When he’s done, it’s nearing five-thirty, and Ben knows he’s got to get home before curfew. So he says his goodbyes to Mrs. Douglas, who reminds him to _bundle up, it’s cold out there,_ and he makes his way out of the school building.

Ben hadn’t brought his bike today, ‘cause he’d been running late and his Mama had given him a ride to school on the way into work. This is proving to be pretty annoying, because Mrs. Douglas is right, it _is _cold out here, and all Ben wants to do is get home and sit in front of the TV with a glass of warm milk.

Outside is empty. Everyone is indoors, enjoying their Valentine’s dates, or sitting sadly at home on their own with a microwave dinner. The wind is blustery, whipping against Ben’s heavily bundled face, but still managing to get through his scarf, anyhow. He hopes he can make it home soon, because (as Aunt Yvonne likes to say) it’s colder than a _witches tit _out here.

Ben crosses the street, onto the bridge over the canal. All he can seem to keep his mind on is a fire, and hot Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, but he can only get those things if he’s at home, so that’s where he’s got to get first.

_Ben, _a voice whispers from the frozen river beneath the bridge, and Ben stares out.

There’s a clown standing out on the icy surface of the canal’s waters.

What?

Ben finds himself walking to the edge of the bridge, though alarm bells are going off in his head, telling him that he does _not_ want to get any closer to this thing. But he does anyway.

The clown is wearing a suit with pom-poms down the center, and it’s got zany tufts of orange hair. Ben can’t see its face, but he knows it’s grinning at him. The clown has a bunch of red balloons clutched in one hand.

_Ben, _it calls again. _Come closer._

_No, _Ben thinks. _I don’t want to. _But his feet move seemingly of their own accord, trying to lift themselves up onto the bridge’s ledge.

_Come closer._

_Closer, Ben._

_Closer._

“No,” Ben hears himself say, and he moves back just a little bit.

The balloons are supposed to be blowing in the direction of the wind. Instead, they’re completely stationary. And the clown isn’t casting a shadow. Even though the light is fading, there is no shadow, no shadow at all.

_But, Benny, _the clown says. _You have to _see. IT’s getting closer now, striding across the ice as if it were nothing, as if it weren’t slippery at all. Ben still can’t see it’s face, but he doesn’t want to. He’s never wanted anything less, and he is very, very afraid.

“I don’t want to see,” Ben croaks, voice cracking, and suddenly the clown is right below him, reaching up, up, up, and Ben sees IT’s face, and IT’s no longer a clown, it’s a mummy, not one of those fake-looking Hollywood mummies, but a real one, with fraying bandages, and rotting, scabby skin, and hollow eyes, and no nose, and IT’s forcing it’s way onto Canal Street, trying to grab for the tips of Ben’s sneakers as it does. Ben makes a sound then, a small, frightened, broken sound, and that is when the mummy shrieks, and Ben starts to _run._

He runs faster than he ever has in his life, and he knows that if the kids at school could see him now, they’d be calling him The Hindenburg, or Hannibal Hanscom the Great Big Elephant, or something like that, but he doesn’t care. They aren’t here, but this mummy _is, _and Ben has only one thing on his mind now: get away.

Ben feels a single slimy hand make a grab for the collar of his coat, and IT succeeds just for a moment, but Ben gives a great big heave and yanks away, running, if possible, even faster now.

He manages to make it to the end of Canal Street before he finally gives in and looks back. The mummy is gone, but Ben feels for the back of his coat and his hands return grasping a length of bandage, brown with age and molding, covered in whatever centuries-old ooze the mummy had been secreting.

Ben throws the bandage into an alleyway, too afraid to go back to the bridge.

He has no idea what he’s just seen, but he knows it must be bad news.

Ben gets home, and instead of eating and watching TV, he shuts himself in his room and goes to sleep.

_Tries _to go to sleep.

_The mummy is reaching for him, holding out one long dead hand, a groan emanating from the depths of the hole in the bandages that must be its mouth, and Ben is frozen, paralyzed in fear, he can’t move, he can’t move, and the mummy’s hand is almost on him now, black skin and gnarled fingernails, yellowed with age, but Ben still can’t move, and just before it touches him, the mummy transforms into a clown with orange hair, and the clown grins, showing off a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth, and then it’s reaching again, IT’s going to grab him -_

Ben bolts upright in bed, breathing heavily. Sweat runs down his back, staining his t-shirt, and the covers lie in an unruly tangle. He must’ve been kicking them all over the place.

It was only a dream. That’s all it was. This time, it was only a dream.

It’s been four months since Ben saw that _thing _on the canal, and he’s still having nightmares about it. They don’t come every night. In fact, Ben will go a long time forgetting about the mummy, until he wakes up on a night like tonight, heart in his throat, stifling a scream.

He’s not sure if what he saw on Canal Street was real or not, but it’s terrifying all the same.

Something

_(turtle)_

tells him that the mummy, the clown, whatever IT was, is more than a nightmare.

IT’s a demon. Derry’s demon.

But Ben tries not to think about it.

Never mind that now, because it’s almost summer vacation, and Ben’s going to spend it shut up in the library and trying not to run into anyone who wants to punch his lights out. He wishes he had someone to spend his time with, but he supposes that if he just goes to the movies a lot, he won’t get too bored.

Ben wonders what Beverly’s doing for her break. Maybe she’s going off to some summer camp, or she’s visiting family, or something. Maybe she’s going somewhere as sunny as she is, like Florida.

But it isn’t any of Ben’s business.

The last day of school comes. Ben says goodbye to Mrs. Douglas a final time, and wishes Mr. Avery, the janitor, a happy summer break (he just grumbles and rolls his eyes, but he smiles a little, because Ben’s always been polite to him). The halls are a mess of kids racing for the exits, throwing books and papers into the air and joining their friends to kick off the season.

Ben just needs to get out of here before Bowers finds him, because Ben hadn’t let Bowers cheat on the social studies exam (they’re in the same class, simply because Henry’s been held back a few times), and Bowers is probably going to have to go to summer school or something now because of it.

So he’ll want Ben’s ass on a platter.

Ben heads over to the bike rack, keeping his head down. The sooner he gets out of here, the better.

“You gonna let me through?”

It’s Beverly Marsh.

Ben immediately blushes. He yanks for his headphones, wrenches them unceremoniously off his head, and manages to let go of his bicycle in the process. It crashes to the ground.

“Is there a password or something?” Beverly asks, raising her eyebrows as Ben struggles to collect himself.

“Uh, no,” he stammers. “No password. Sorry.”

“It’s ok,” she replies. “What’cha listening to?” She puts on Ben’s headphones before he can stop her. He turns even redder.

“Uh, well, I don’t - I don’t really like - “

“New Kids On the Block?” she asks incredulously. Ben smiles sheepishly. “I guess that makes sense, since you’re the new kid.”

“Yeah,” Ben breathes. “I guess. It’s Ben. I’m Ben. Hanscom. From social studies.”

Beverly quirks an eyebrow. “I know.”

Ben feels his face burning. She smiles, which only makes it worse.

“Henry and his goons are over by the west entrance, just so you know.” She shoots him a knowing smirk.

“Oh,” Ben says. “Well, I didn’t - “

“He’s obviously looking for you,” Beverly says.

Ben grimaces slightly. “Yeah.”

Beverly reaches out behind Ben, and Ben has only a moment to wonder what she’s doing before her hand comes back, clutching Ben’s yearbook.

“Want me to sign this, New Kid?” she asks.

Yes. _Yes._

No.

_Yes._

“Oh, uh, sure?” Ben says, and it sounds like a question. Beverly opens his yearbook, and he winces, ‘cause the page marked _Autographs _is blank. She frowns slightly, before taking out a pen and signing the page.

She’s left-handed, Ben notices. And, he sees, with a thrill of delight that makes him feel queasy, she scribbles three hearts underneath her name.

She hands it back to him.

“See ya, Ben from Soc.” She starts to walk away.

“Bye, Beverly!” His heart is trying to break out of his chest.

“Hang tough, New Kid On the Block!” she shouts back.

“‘Please Don’t Go, Girl!’” Ben calls after her, but by now she’s out of earshot. “That’s the name of another...New Kids On the Block song...” Ben trails off.

He takes another look at the yearbook page. Beverly’s handwriting is neat, and loopy, and the hearts are quickly and sloppily drawn, but Ben loves them, anyway. He tears the page out, ‘cause he knows no one else is going to sign it, and folds it carefully, shoves it in his pocket.

He practically glides to the library. He has an objective in mind, something he should’ve thought of months ago.

He’s going to write Beverly an anonymous poem. From a secret admirer, because then he can tell her how he feels without her knowing it’s from him.

And maybe, maybe she’ll figure it out, anyway. And she’ll march up to Ben and she’ll ask, “Ben, did you write this?” and Ben will, well, he’ll _probably _say yes, if he can say anything at all, and then Beverly will...

She’ll do _something._

Ben feels giddy.

He parks his bike outside the library, failing to see Bowers lurking nearby in his wistful anticipation of getting out what he needs to write down.

“Ben,” Mrs. Starrett says, surprised. “Summer vacation’s just started. What are you doing here?”

“I, uh,” Ben says. “I wanted to mail a postcard. To my, uh, to my cousin, Jimmy. He lives in Dallas, it’s his fourth birthday in a few days, so I want it to get there in time.”

This is true, but Mama has already sent a card.

“Oh, well that’s nice of you,” Mrs. Starrett says, taking Ben’s quarter in exchange for a postcard with a picture of the Derry Standpipe on it.

“Thanks,” Ben mutters, and seats himself at a table near the back. He doesn’t want anyone to see what he’s doing. This is private.

Ben spends the better part of forty-five minutes jotting down lines onto a blank sheet of paper, crossing out, editing, and adding in. It’s a tedious process, but Ben likes writing poetry, especially haikus, and for Beverly, he’d do anything.

Once he’s finished, he copies the final product out neatly onto the postcard. This is what he ends up with:

_Your hair is winter fire /_

_January embers /_

_My heart burns there, too_

_\- Your Secret Admirer_

It’s good. Probably the best thing Ben’s ever written. He picks up his things, wishes Mrs. Starrett a great summer, and walks out the door, unable to stop himself from smiling.

His joy does not last long.

“Where you goin’, Tits?” he hears a familiar voice ask, and then Ben is running because Henry Bowers is looming out of the shadow of the statue outside the library, grinning. Ben knows Bowers is after him for not letting him copy, and he’s not going to let Ben go until he’s satisfied. Victor Criss and Belch Huggins cut Ben off, grab him, and now they’re dragging him away, past Belch’s blue Corvette that Ben had been too preoccupied to notice before, hauling him down the street and through the park to a bridge.

They shove him roughly up against the wooden rails, bumpy and uneven with the years of carvings. Patrick Hockstetter pulls out his lighter and his can of hairspray, lets a teasing jet of flame rocket out at Ben’s face, close enough that Ben can feel the heat of it against his cheeks.

“Alright, Tits,” Bowers says. “You’re new here, so let me give you a little town history lesson. This here’s the Kissing Bridge. It’s a Derry landmark, and it’s known for two things: Sucking face, and carving names.”

Bowers pulls out his switchblade, and pops it. In an instant, Ben’s legs are jelly, his stomach an icy pit. He can tell Bowers is serious, even if the others can’t yet. The glint in his eyes...it’s dangerous.

“Aw, yeah,” Bowers snarls. “You wouldn’t like me to cut you, would ya, Tits? Might do you a favor, get rid of all that extra skin.” Belch and Criss cackle meanly.

“Henry,” Ben pants. “Please don’t. Please, just - “

“YOU SHUT YOUR FAT FUCKING MOUTH,” Bowers shouts, and then he punches Ben once, twice in the face. Ben’s head snaps back against the fence. He’s dimly aware that his nose is bleeding.

“Alright,” Bowers commands. “Hold his shirt up.” Criss and Belch are all too happy to oblige, rucking Ben’s t-shirt up above his nipples, all the way up to his chin, exposing his big stomach. Hockstetter shrieks with laughter at the sight.

“What do you think, Patrick?” Bowers asks. Ben’s eyes are still trained on his knife. “Should I carve him up like a Thanksgiving turkey?”

Hockstetter licks his lips, eyes wide and maniacal. He lifts his can of hairspray again. “I’ll light his hair on fire,” he says, sending out another burst of flame. “Like Michael Jackson.”

Bowers laughs. He comes closer, shoving Hockstetter aside, and fixes Ben with a steely glare.

“You know,” he says, almost casually. “This wouldn’t be happening if you’d have just let me cheat off you.”

“Next time,” Ben chokes desperately. “Next time, I promise, you can copy, I promise.”

“Good to know. But it’s a little late for that now.” Bowers holds the knife out. “I’m just gonna leave you a little reminder, lardass. So that _next time,_ you won’t forget.”

Before Ben can do anything, the tip of the knife lashes out, breaks the skin of Ben’s belly, and slashes downward, quick as lightning.

Ben almost passes out from the pain.

“Woah, _Henry!_” Belch exclaims, and his hands start to loosen on Ben’s shoulders in shock. Ben realizes that Belch and Criss are bullies, but they aren’t completely _deranged_ like the other two. They’ve got limits.

“Dude,” Criss says nervously. “Maybe we shouldn’t - “

_“SHUT UP!” _Bowers screams. _“SHUT THE FUCK UP! I’M GONNA CARVE MY WHOLE NAME ON THIS COTTAGE CHEESE!” _The hands holding Ben release him completely.

Hockstetter howls with glee as Bowers makes two more cuts on Ben’s stomach, slashing another vertical line, and then a horizontal line connecting the two, creating a crude letter_ H. _The pain is so intense Ben fears he might pass out. He also fears he might die from blood loss, and wouldn’t that just be _sad? _Dying on his own, with no one there but his Mama and maybe Mrs. Starrett, if he’s lucky? Without ever making friends? Without ever getting to give Beverly Marsh her poem?

No. Ben’s not going to die on his own. He can’t. He won’t. Not here, not now, and especially not because of Henry _fucking _Bowers.

Before Bowers can start in on the _E,_ Ben kicks out with surprising speed, forcing Bowers off of him and tumbling backward over the fence with the momentum. He lands on the ground, grunting in pain as he tumbles head-over-heels down the hill, succeeding in covering himself in dirt and probably getting his fresh new cuts infected.

In their shock, the bullies stare dumbly after him for a few seconds. Then,

_“GO!” _Bowers screeches, and that’s all it takes for the others to give chase.

Ben reaches the end of the hill, tripping over his own feet in his haste to get moving again, shifting slightly with the weight of his backpack against his shoulders. He stumbles against leaves and branches, over roots and rocks, but manages to keep going, even though he can hear them behind him, crashing through the forest.

There’s a sewer pipe here, it’s mouth open to the world, nothing but inky blackness inside. Ben thinks he could probably crawl in, just a little ways, and hide out there. Only for a little bit, until Bowers and all them leave.

But something about that pipe makes Ben uneasy, and with a twinge of horror he realizes the pipe is making him feel the same as he did when he saw the mummy.

Scared.

Ben keeps going.

He makes it to the river. He thinks they’ve lost him, but he’s not willing to take any chances. The water soaks through his sneakers, getting his socks wet, though Ben hardly notices. He splashes across the stones littering the streambed, sloshing through, and even though a few glances behind him tells him that he’s no longer being followed, Ben is simply too afraid to stop.

He rounds a bend in the river, and trips, catching himself on his hands.

“Holy shit!” a voice exclaims. “What happened to _you?” _Ben looks up. It’s Richie Tozier, standing on the banks at the head of another pipe

_(sewer pipe the sewers)_

with Eddie Kaspbrak, Bill Denbrough, and Stanley Uris. Eddie and Stanley immediately rush to Ben, Eddie splashing through the water haphazardly, Stanley nimbly hopping from stone to stone.

Ben notices this, and then he collapses onto his back, breathing hard.

He can’t explain it, but he knows he’ll be ok, now. He knows he’ll be ok.

At least, for now.

Something happens in Ben’s life which has never happened to him before. He isn’t sure why it happens, but it does, and he knows it’s for a reason. He doesn’t know how to go about it, if he’s doing it right, but he seems to be, so he assumes it’s all ok, though it’s still very new to him.

  
Ben Hanscom makes _friends._

He actually makes friends! He’s been waiting for this his entire life, and now it’s _actually happened, _and Ben seriously couldn’t be any happier. It’s like, one day Ben had no one, just his ridiculous crush on Bev Marsh, Bowers and his friends picking on him, and his Mama telling him to be home by curfew. Now it’s like someone’s flipped a switch. Suddenly, Ben has friends, _best _friends, six of them, and he hopes he isn’t making a fool of himself when he’s with them.

Richie, Stanley, Bill, Eddie, Mike (after the Apocalyptic Rock Fight), Beverly.

_Beverly._

Beverly Marsh is Ben Hanscom’s friend, and he doesn’t care if she doesn’t like him back, if she never returns his feelings, if she never kisses him, because being her friend is enough, and Ben wants to be that his whole life.

Something about the group just works so well together. Like something is pushing them together, even though they’re all different from each other, and somehow it clicks anyway. A couple of times, other kids, some that Bill or Richie knows, will come and hang with the Losers, too, but they don’t last. They stay for a day, but they don’t have the spark, the thing, the thing that everyone else does. It’s like once they were united as seven, no one could leave, and no one else could be allowed in.

It’s weird, but it works.

Now Ben doesn’t have to lie when his Mama asks what he did with his friends today. He can tell her for real, what they all got up to, and Mama is glad to hear that his friends are treating him right.

“So, who are all these friends?” Mama asks over dinner, seemingly mystified by the fact that Ben is talking to her about people, people she’s always assumed he’s been with. “Tell me their names.”

Ben blinks. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m just interested. Maybe I’ve seen some of them around.”

“Ok,” Ben says. “Well, there’s Bill Denbrough, and Eddie Kaspbrak. And then there’s Stanley Uris, and Richie Tozier, and Mike Hanlon, from Hanlon Farms. And,” (Ben blushes slightly) “there’s Beverly Marsh.”

Mama’s face, which had been earnest throughout the naming of all the boys, suddenly falls. She frowns, looking as if she’s just spotted something rather unpleasant on the bottom of her shoe.

“Beverly Marsh?” she asks, as if she hadn’t heard him correctly.

Ben nods.

Mama shifts uncomfortably. She won’t look Ben in the eyes. “Benny...honey...I don’t think you should be playing with that Marsh girl.”

What? No.

“What?” Ben’s heart is beating, hard, and not in a good way. “Why?”

“Oh, Benny, it’s just...I hear things in town. Word gets around, and I’ve heard plenty about her. And she’s spending time with all you boys...” Mama suddenly looks very serious. “Benjamin, she isn’t making you do anything you don’t want to, is she?”

“What?” Ben splutters. “Mama, _no, _she’d _never. _Bev isn’t like that. All those rumors are fake.”

“How can you be sure?” Mama demands, and Ben is now angry.

“Because,” he retorts. “She’s my _friend.”_

“Friends can lie,” Mama says, harshly now. “Friends can go behind your back, and do bad things.”

Ben shakes his head stoically. “Good friends don’t lie. Bev’s a good friend. They all are.”

“Are you sure she isn’t sneaking around with one of the other boys? I’ve heard that’s a past time of hers. Promise me you won’t do that, Benny.”

Ben suddenly has a frightening thought, one he has never had before. In this moment, he hates his mother.“She’s not!” he bursts. “She doesn’t _do _those things.”

“It doesn’t matter if she does or if she doesn’t,” Mama says. “I don’t want you spending time with people with bad reputations.”

Ben stands from his seat. “I don’t care,” he declares. “She’s my friend, and I love her, and I’m not going to stop hanging out with her, or any of them.”

And he leaves the room.

It’s only later, hunched under the covers, simmering with quiet anger, that Ben realizes that he’d said that he loves Bev.

That’s the first time he’s ever said it out loud. To anyone. He hasn’t even said it to himself yet. Mama probably just thought he meant he loved Bev as a friend, but Ben understands that it runs much deeper, and he thinks it always will.

He wonders, as he so often does, if she liked the poem. If she thought it was sweet. If she’s wondering who wrote it, if she _knows _who wrote it.

He thinks, with a slight sickening feeling, that she probably thinks it’s from Bill.

Well, that would make sense. Ben knows how Bev feels about Bill, it’s obvious in the way she looks at him, and he can see in Bill’s eyes that he likes Bev, too. If it were any other member of the Losers Club, Ben might be jealous, but it’s _Bill. _He’s their unspoken leader. Ben gets why Bev would like him. Really. Bill is tall, he’s handsome, he’s smart, he’s nice, he’s brave. The only real thing “wrong” with him is his stutter. And what’s Ben? Ben is fat, and slow, and he’s shy, and he gets embarrassed too easily, and he likes lame things like books, and New Kids On the Block. Comparing Bill to Ben is like comparing Han Solo to Jabba the Hutt. It’s almost _funny._

No, Ben’s not mad about it. Yes, it hurts, to see Bev like another guy, but Bev doesn’t _owe _Ben anything. Just because he likes her doesn’t mean she has to feel the same. And even if she thinks the poem is from Bill, or even if she doesn’t know _who _it’s from, Ben hopes his words are still making her feel happy. Because Beverly Marsh is beautiful, and Ben had to tell her so.

And anyway, it’s not like Bev never hangs out with Ben. She always listens to whatever he has to say about the new book he’s reading, and she compliments his building skills, and she listens to New Kids On the Block with him, defending the fact that Ben listens to them when Richie or whoever decides to poke fun.

If being Bev’s friend is all Ben’s destined to be, he doesn’t mind. He just wants to be able to have her in his life.

He’s glad to have them all in his life.

That’s why he builds the clubhouse.

After that first day where Eddie had patched him up after Bowers had knifed him, Ben had gone home with a plan forming in his head, begging to be put to page. He’d worked on a sketch of his idea all night, making the different sections, deciding where it was going to be, working out all the kinks. By the time he’d finished it had been past midnight, and he’d been just about falling asleep at his desk, but Ben had ended up with the rough drawing of a clubhouse, and the next day, after the Losers had gone to the quarry, he’d gone and started on it.

Ben has always liked building. He idolizes Frank Lloyd Wright, he constantly tinkers with Legos and Lincoln Logs, and Mama says that he could build her a palace someday, or a tower taller than the Empire State Building. Ben doesn’t know how to explain it, but when he builds, when he _thinks _about building, it all comes naturally. Like he was born with it. The structure seems to form itself in his head, and he knows where everything is supposed to go, each piece, each part. So he uses this sort of instinct to build the clubhouse, and while it’s shabby, and not very structurally sound, it’s not bad for Ben’s first piece of work.

And the Losers _love _it. Ben finishes it up right around the time of the rock fight, when Mike joins their group and the club is complete. He takes them all down to see it, thinking they’ll call it lame, hoping they won’t hate it. It’s his first building. He’s self-conscious about it.

“What the dick is _this?” _Richie asks, hopping down the ladder, but other than that, Ben’s friends give nothing but praise.

Ben tries not to let it go to his head. He mostly succeeds. Sometimes, it’s hard not to feel a little self-pride.

“You’re oddly good at this, New Kid,” Bev tells him, smiling, a cigarette smoking between her fingers and one of Stanley’s shower caps on her head, and Ben smiles back.

Ben made sure to include everything a group of thirteen year olds could ever want. There’s a hammock, a radio, posters of the Lost Boys and one of Van Halen that Richie nods at appreciatively, shelves to hold things and cheap toys from Freese’s department store that all break or go mysteriously missing pretty quickly. Ben even put in a little wooden swing.

_(Even when Ben grows older, and builds things larger than life, he remembers a clubhouse, and although he can’t recall who he’d built it for, he looks back on it as his greatest achievement.)_

Ben is happy, happier than he’s ever been in his life, and even in a shithole like Derry, he’s been able to find a family.

But Derry is not without its devils.

Ben had tried to forget the mummy, but it turns out that his friends have all seen one, too. Not a mummy, necessarily, but a fear. Something terrible. Something impossible.

And they’ve all seen a clown.

“I th-think whatever’s k-k-killing kids,” Bill says to them. “Whatever took B-Betty Ripsom, whatever took _G-G-G-Georgie, _is this clown. And we have to stop it.”

Ben had known this. Had heard about Bill seeing his brother, about Eddie’s leper and Stan’s dead kids on the first day he’d met them. That had been part of the reason for the clubhouse. They’d needed a place to talk, a place to talk about...IT.

And Ben had provided it.

Mike helps him, works with Ben to try and figure out what IT is, what IT wants, where IT came from. They never find out, but they do find a pattern. After hours of scouring Derry’s history books (Ben had been thrilled to find that Mike also enjoys reading, but this isn’t where he’d wanted it to go), they manage to figure something out. A pattern, of sorts.

“Every twenty-seven years,” Ben tells the rest of the group. “Something bad happens in Derry. The Kitchener Ironworks explosion, the Bradley Gang, the Black Spot. Always twenty-seven years, like clockwork.”

“And we think that’s when it happens,” Mike says, face grave. “That every twenty-seven years, IT comes out of hibernation, and that’s why all these bad things happen. Because of IT.”

The Losers look at each other fearfully. The silence is deafening.

“Why?” Stan says, face white and bloodless, breaking the quiet. His voice quivers. “What does IT come out of hibernation for?”

Stan looks like he already knows the answer. So do the others.

“To feed,” Ben says, hardly above a whisper. “To feed on kids.”

Things all seem to happen rather quickly after that.

The Losers go to twenty-nine Neibolt Street, the house with the rotting wood and the terrible, terrible fear radiating from it. Ben gets sliced across the stomach again by a fence post Beverly stabs into IT’s forehead, but it’s not as bad as what Bowers had already done to him. IT disappears, they all run out of there, Eddie clutching his broken arm, and then Mrs. Kaspbrak is taking Eddie away, and then he’s going...going...

Gone.

And the Losers seem to be gone as well. Ben had finally made friends, and now they’ve been taken away from him, and it’s all IT’s fault, it’s all Pennywise’s fault, and Ben wants to kill IT, wants to see it suffer and scream and writhe for what IT did to the missing kids, for what it did to the Losers Club.

Ben is lonely again, and that’s because of Derry.

He goes back to the library, to the corny posters and the great glass corridor. Reads and reads and reads, but doesn’t take much of the information in. He goes to the clubhouse a few times, but it feels wrong to be down there without the others. Ben doesn’t even hang out with just a few of them. They’re all separated from each other, and they might never be friends again.

So Ben checks out books, because he can’t stand to be alone in the big library with no one else there, and he takes his books home and sits on his bed, though he isn’t interested in the words at all. _The Outsiders, _one of Ben’s favorite books, is not really keeping him entertained this time around. He can’t seem to focus.

The phone rings out in the hall. Ben ignores it, and can soon hear his mother’s footsteps coming from the kitchen.

Ben looks back down at his book. He sort of feels like he’s been reading the same sentence over and over again. Ponyboy is...well, what _is_ Ponyboy doing?

What is _Ben_ doing?

“Benny! Telephone!” Mama calls from the hall.

Ben is up in an instant, book sliding to the floor, forgotten completely. Maybe it’s Richie, and he wants to go for a few rounds on Street Fighter, even though Ben isn’t all too good at it. Maybe it’s Eddie, and his mom’s finally letting him out to play. Maybe, Ben hopes, it’s Bev.

“Ben,” Bill’s voice says through the phone when Ben puts it to his ear, and immediately Ben knows something is wrong. “IT’s got B-B-Beverly.”

_“What?”_

“IT,” Bill says, his tone a mixture of dread and anger. “The fucking cl-clown. IT got Beverly, and we have to g-go save h-her. Will you - “

“Yes,” Ben says automatically. Is it even a question?

“Ok. Good.”

“What about the others?”

“They’ll c-come,” Bill tells him. “I know th-they will.”

“Ok. Meet at Neibolt?”

“Yeah. N-Neibolt.”

“See you then, Billy.”

“Thanks, B-Ben.”

Ben hangs up the phone.

He has to go. Even if before he’d thought he’d never see his friends again, and he’d been wishing for everything to be like it was before, he hadn’t meant like _this. _There’s a difference between going to the movies with your friends, and banding together as a group to go save one of you from a killer demon clown.

Beverly’s in danger and Ben has to go help her. He _has _to. Because life without Bev would be...

He doesn’t want to think about it.

“Mama, I’m going out!” Ben yells down the hall. It’s still pretty early in the day. They’ve got time.

“Ok, just be back by curfew!” she replies, but Ben is already out the door.

He’s the first to get to Neibolt, although he isn’t the closest one to it, Eddie is. Ben had pedaled as hard as he could the whole time, harder than he ever had in his life, and he isn’t even short on breath now. He’s just determined.

And speaking of Eddie, it seems that he’s managed to escape his mother anyway. Ben sees with a twinge of pain that the only autograph on Eddie’s cast is the word **LOSER **in big black letters. A hastily drawn bright red V overlaps the S.

Ben will be first in line to sign it later. Once this is over with, and they’re all ok.

Bev is _floating._

They get down to the cistern, after Mike shoves Bowers down the well, after Stanley’s face is mangled by IT, and she’s just floating there, unconscious, suspended in the air as if on a puppet string.

Pennywise is nowhere to be found.

“Come on,” Ben hears himself saying, grabbing hold of one of her sneakers. “Help me get her down.”

Richie grabs hold of her other leg and yanks her down to their level, but by then Ben can tell something’s wrong.

Bev’s not unconscious.

She looks like she’s _dead._

Oh God. _Please don’t be dead, please, please, please don’t be dead. Please._

“Beverly?” Ben holds her shoulders and shakes her lightly. Mike, Richie, Stanley, and Eddie crowd around, looking at Bev’s limp form in horror.

Bev doesn’t react to the shaking.

“Beverly!” Ben says. He shakes her a little harder this time. “Wake up! Wake up!”

Nothing. Her head rolls back and forth, but her eyes stare blankly ahead, her mouth agape. She looks like she can’t see Ben at all, like she’s seeing through him, and she still isn’t waking up.

Ben’s been seen through his whole life. He thought he’d rid himself of that.

_“Beverly!” _Ben screams, tears creeping into his voice. He doesn’t care if he’s crying. Mike’s crying. _Richie’s _crying. They all are.

_“Beverly! Please wake up! Bev, please!”_He hugs her, thinking it might do _something, _but it doesn’t. She just stares, with those glazed-over eyes, and Ben wants it to _stop. _He wheels on the rest of them.

_“Guys, she’s not waking up. Why isn’t she waking up?”_

But they can’t answer. Stan looks horrified. Eddie shakes his head, tears streaming down his face.

Ben turns back to Bev.

And he does the only thing he can think of.

He kisses her.

It’s Ben’s first kiss. This isn’t how he’d wanted it to happen. He’d wanted to kiss Bev, yes, but only if she’d been, you know, _awake_ to do it, and only if they were together in a much nicer and more private place than Derry’s sewers.

The others make noises of disgust and surprise. Ben pulls back, holding Beverly’s face in his hands and waiting for a reaction, a breath, something.

Nothing. Then -

Bev gasps and collapses forward. Ben catches her, and Mike pulls her to her feet from behind.

Bev looks at Ben in a way she’s never looked at him before. He decides he likes it.

“January embers,” she whispers, realization in her voice.

Ben feels a few more tears fall down his face. “My heart burns there, too,” he whispers back, and Bev hugs him again, and then they’re all hugging, and crying, and holding each other, and it’s a good moment in the face of something terrible.

It’s a good moment, it is. Not before, and not afterward, but right there. Right there.

And later, when Beverly swears to come back if IT isn’t dead, Ben swears, too. Not because she did. He would’ve done it, anyway. Because he wants to be there for all of them if they _do _have to come back, and he wouldn’t dream of not being there for his friends.

Ben tells them that he thinks IT is really dead, that they won’t have to carry out this promise. They all offer him pained and hopeful smiles.

But Ben doesn’t really think that. He tries to convince himself of it, but it doesn’t work.

He knows he’ll be coming home to Derry twenty-seven years from now.

Maybe by then, he’ll be stronger. Better. _Thinner._

One by one, the Losers all head off. And though it isn’t the last time they’re together, it’s the last time they’re _all _together, and something tells Ben he isn’t the only one who realizes this.

And Beverly Marsh, the girl that he’s in love with, is leaving.

Ben sticks around for as long as he can, mostly staring at the ground and trying to keep himself from crying. But he can tell Bev and Bill want to be alone together, because even though Bev knows Ben wrote her the poem, it isn’t Ben who she wants.

And that’s ok.

So Ben leaves them. He hugs Bill. He hugs Bev, and she hugs back tight and kisses his cheek.

And then he turns around and walks away, hands shoved in the pockets of his hoodie, wiping tears and snot from his face as he does.

Once he’s out of the field, and he’s alone again, Ben cries for real. He sits on a rock in the forest and just bawls his eyes out. It would be embarrassing if someone saw him, but no one comes.

The feeling of loneliness is all too familiar.

When Ben gets home, he locks himself in his room and takes out the yearbook page he’d ripped out. Stares at the signature that he loves so much, cries over the hearts scribbled underneath it. He cries for a long, long time.

Ben doesn’t see Bev again. Not for another twenty-seven years.

Life goes on, but it isn’t the same.

The Losers still hang out together. They try to forget the summer of ’89. They go to the movies, they celebrate birthdays, they bike around town, they do everything they’d done before. But there’s a Beverly Marsh-shaped hole in the group, too obviously there, and no matter how much they all try to ignore it, it gapes at them.

Ben had hoped she would call. She’d said she would. But there’s been no word from Bev at all, not even a

_(postcard)_

letter. The others have given up. Once Richie stopped waiting for Bev to call, the others had decided that it was futile. Because Richie had been really close to Bev, and if he says there’s no point anymore, then there really must not be.

But Ben had been close to her, too. And Ben refuses to give up on Beverly. She’s only busy, preoccupied with moving in and adjusting to a new school, and new friends, and all her homework, that she hasn’t had the time to call home to Derry. She’ll call. Eventually.

Ben wishes he’d been able to get Bev’s phone number for her aunt’s house, but she’d said she wouldn’t know it until she got there. She’d promised she would call them and give them the new number once she was settled in.

It’s been days and she hasn’t called. It’s been weeks and she hasn’t called. It’s been months.

It’s been one whole year, and still nothing.

And that’s when Ben finally gives up, too. But God, he doesn’t want to.

He’s still got his friends, and for them he’s forever grateful. But he knows they feel Bev’s absence, too. Just as much as they all start to feel the gaps in their memory when they think back on That Summer. Ben can only remember flashes, certain things, but he knows something awful must have happened to them. Ben’s read that after certain traumatic events, the victim’s memory is completely wiped. They only remember what happened before, and everything after. Nothing in between.

That’s how Ben feels. He often wakes in the dead of night with his heart in his throat, images of a bright red balloon or a cold, rotting hand filling his brain. But he doesn’t know what they mean, and if the others are experiencing the same nightmares, they don’t talk about it.

It’s tough to admit, but it’s true. The Losers are so empty without Beverly that they can hardly function as a group. They still hang out together, but more often than not, Ben hangs out with some of them one on one, sometimes Mike, usually Bill.

They don’t use the clubhouse anymore. After a while, Ben starts to forget about it.

And then Bill moves.

And he doesn’t call.

And Stan moves.

He doesn’t call.

Eddie moves.

He doesn’t call.

So it’s just Ben and Richie and Mike, but now they hardly spend time with each other at all. Richie makes new friends at the high school, and Mike dedicates himself to the farm, so Ben goes back to the library, its glass corridor no longer so enticing as it once was, and he finds himself back at square one.

Ben Hanscom is lonely again. Once you get a taste of the good life, you don’t want to go back to what you had before. But that’s where Ben is, and it seems like that’s where Ben’s staying.

When Mama tells him they’re going to Omaha, to move in with Aunt Jean, Mama’s older sister, Ben isn’t even that heartbroken. Aunt Jean’s a bitch, and Nebraska’s a ways away from Maine, but at this point, he’d kill to get out of Derry. Anywhere else, anywhere but here.

The last time Ben sees Mike and Richie, they go out for burgers at the diner. Nothing special. Richie picks at his food glumly the whole time. Mike sighs an awful lot into his milkshake.

Ben knows the feeling.

And then he’s giving them each one last hug, one last goodbye, and Mike cries, and Ben cries, and Richie says he’s just got weed in his eye from his pre-meal smoke, but Ben knows he’s crying too.

Ben leaves.

And he forgets.

Omaha is a nice change from Derry, though Ben feels like something’s missing. Aunt Jean is uptight, but Ben can live with that. Mama seems happy. That’s what should count.

But Ben isn’t happy. He’s never felt more alone.

He stays alone for a long time after that.

Aunt Jean gets to be a lot worse than Ben has ever known her to be.

Ben’s never liked her at all, and that feeling is mutual. Aunt Jean’s snobbish, and mean, and flounces her often rude opinions without caring who hears them. Even Mama knows she can be “a little difficult,” but Aunt Jean’s also giving them a place to stay, so Mama tells Ben that he just has to deal with it.

Aunt Jean is a widow, her husband Pete having died a few years before, and she has no kids. She’s a good deal older than Mama at fifty-nine years old, and she hates Ben with every fiber of her being.

It starts on their first day in Omaha. Aunt Jean comes out in front of her house to greet Ben and Mama as they pull into the driveway, and she and Mama both squeal a little and hug each other, Mama laughing softly, Aunt Jean digging her two-inch nails into Mama’s back.

Then Ben gets out of the car, and Aunt Jean stares.

“Oh,” she says, surveying Ben with a look of great dislike. “I hadn’t realized you were still so..._big.”_

And it just goes from there. At mealtimes, Aunt Jean serves Ben anywhere from heaping portions of food, weighing down his plate, to bare slivers of it, a few wilted carrots, a skinny shaving of beef, a baked potato smaller than a tennis ball. Ben never complains, just eats, but Aunt Jean finds ways to chastise him anyway.

On nights when Ben gets a lot of food, he eats as much as he can until he’s full to bursting, patting his stomach and groaning. If there’s even a little left on his plate, Aunt Jean says,

“You can’t even finish one plate of food? Really, Benjamin, such a _waste. _There are starving children in Africa who could’ve eaten that.”

But on nights when Ben gets almost nothing to eat, he polishes it off pretty quickly, and then stares longingly at the serving dishes, too afraid of what Aunt Jean will say if he goes for second helpings. And Aunt Jean observes this and screeches,

“You eat all that and you’re _still _hungry? Even after all the food you’ve already had? Benjamin, starving children in Africa could’ve eaten that heaping platter. Eating more than you need is just gluttonous, you know. You could do with more exercise, maybe a diet, instead of reading all those books. Arlene, you should really have _words _with your son about this.”

Mama just smiles wanly and shakes her head, and while Ben is glad that she isn’t joining in with Aunt Jean, he never forgives his mother for not standing up for him.

Because Lord knows Ben wouldn’t be able to stand up for himself. What would he say? _Aunt Jean, I know I’m a beachball of a boy. A dumptruck, if you will. A real butterball. But you yakking about it all the time isn’t going to help me get less fat. So why don’t you just shut the hell up and go back to rifling through the neighbors’s mail when they aren’t home?_

Yet somehow, despite all of his hatred for his aunt, Ben has to admit that she’s right. Ever since leaving Derry, he hasn’t gotten any skinnier. In fact, he’s gotten _fatter, _and by the time he reaches seventeen, he weighs over two hundred pounds.

He supposes part of it might have been the move. He feels like in Derry, he wasn’t getting any bigger. He isn’t sure why. He hardly thinks about Derry at all, truth be told.

Ben has no friends in Omaha, at East Side High School, but this is nothing new. Ben’s been alone his entire life, hasn’t he? How is this any different than Dallas, than Derry?

But it _feels _different from Derry, for some crazy reason, and Ben has no idea why.

Sometimes he dreams about things. A silver bicycle, a glass corridor, a beautiful girl with flaming hair. The bicycle means nothing to Ben. The corridor, he knows, was part of the Derry Public Library, and he’d always liked it, from an architect’s point of view. But the girl...the girl is much different. She almost seems to _call _to Ben, and though Ben doesn’t know her name, or anything about her, he thinks he falls in love with her. He looks forward to seeing the dream-girl every night. Every time he does, a single phrase flits through his subconscious.

_January embers._

Ben writes this in the margins of his notes, on his bookmarks, on his homework, the words refusing to let him alone. But he has no idea what they mean.

Other times Ben notices an old white scar, stretched across the planes of his gut. He doesn’t know how he got it, but it twinges slightly when he looks at it in the mirror. It’s in the shape of a crudely made H, and while Ben doesn’t understand why, it gives him a sickening feeling to look at that H, and the way it’s starting to pucker with age.

The bullying doesn’t stop in Nebraska, either. How could it, if all Ben has done is get fatter and fatter, like a beached and bloated whale?

It gets to be so bad that Ben dreads gym class more than anything. To be fair, he already did, but now it’s worse. He always gets picked last any time they’re choosing teams, the other boys whip him with their towels in the showers, calling him _Jugs _and _The Blob_, and Coach Woodleigh _hates _Ben. He’s sure of it.

And then, the fat-paddling starts.

It’s just a game at first, but it gets way out of hand. One cold October day after class Ben is walking back from the showers, towel wrapped as far as it can go around his huge waist, trying to get to his locker where his clothes are, and Rodney Henson lashes out and smacks Ben’s gut, right in the center.

Ben looks up at him, bewildered.

“Hey,” Rodney says, grinning, slapping Ben’s stomach again. “Hey, guys, check it.” Another slap. _“Fat-paddling.”_

A couple of the other boys laugh and descend on Ben like vultures, hitting Ben in the belly, and not lightly either. Ben still doesn’t even know what to do.

Rodney howls with laughter. “Look at the way it _jiggles! _Good _Gawd, _Jugs, how do you fit through doors?” And as he reaches to hit Ben again with his big farm boy hand, Ben has only one fleeting thought:

_Bowers has come back. He’s escaped from whatever hospital they’ve got him locked up in, and he’s come back for me, and this time, he’s not going to stop until he carves his whole name on my big fat stomach._

But who is Bowers?

Ben realizes he is afraid.

He tries to shoulder his way past the guys, but they hold him back and keep on smacking him, chanting “_Fat-paddling! Fat-paddling!” _The others start to notice, and pretty soon everyone’s in on it, swarming around Ben like kids at a candy store, grabbing for every inch of skin they can find. Even Gerald Burlingame, who isn’t all too skinny himself, is cackling and chanting along with them.

Ben knows he won’t be able to fight them all off.

So he runs.

The boys give chase, screaming with laughter, smacking everywhere, Ben’s hips, his back, his ass, his legs. Ben keeps on running, all around the locker room, and when he thinks

_it’s bowers it’s bowers it’s bowers oh god oh god_

he starts to scream, even though the name has no significance to him.

Ben dashes to the end of the locker room’s hall, past the coach’s office, the guys still yelling,

_“Fat-paddling! Fat-paddling! Fat-paddling!”_

Ben’s knees catch the edge of a bench and he goes sprawling, cracking his head on the tiles below, and then they’re all on top of him, and all he can feel is hands, hands, hands, and all he can hear is laughing, laughing, laughing.

And even though he is surrounded by people, Ben has never felt more alone.

“Alright, guys,” a loud voice says. “You’ve had your fun, now go get dressed. I’m not writing passes for all of you if you’re late.”

The hands finally stop, the laughter finally recedes, and Ben is left on his back, staring at the ceiling in pain.

“Jesus Christ, they got you good,” Coach Woodleigh remarks. Ben sits up, looks him dead in the eye, and bursts into tears.

Coach just stands there looking at him as Ben sobs into his hands, watching this fat kid cry on his floor, and then he sits on the bench Ben had tripped over.

“Benny, why don’t you just fucking shut up?”

Ben does, mostly out of shock.

Coach scowls at him. He reaches out for Ben, and for one crazy second, Ben thinks he’s going to hug him. Instead, Coach grabs Ben’s tits and squeezes.

Ben lurches back from him.

“You think I’m going to _comfort _you?” Coach Woodleigh asks, distaste in his voice. “You disgust me, you disgust them, you disgust _everyone, _Hanscom. It’s a fuckin’ wonder why your mother doesn’t hate you, too. You wonder why you don’t got no friends?” He gestures to Ben’s body. _“This _is why.”

Ben doesn’t say anything. He just stares, open-mouthed, at the teacher who is supposed to be encouraging, who is supposed to be on his side.

“You know why I hate you like I do, Benny? It’s because God gave you a good body under all this fat, but you decided to ruin His gift and pig out on junk food. It’s pretty selfish, if you ask me. It’s pretty ungrateful, if you ask me. You’re only _fat _up here.” Coach taps the side of his head. “That’s where everyone’s fat. If you could open your fucking eyes and see that, maybe you wouldn’t be getting _fat-paddled.”_

“Coach Woodleigh, I’m - “

“You don’t need to say anything, Hanscom,” Coach sneers. “Just stop feeling so goddamned sorry for yourself. It’s your own fault they make fun of you. But you’ll never get there. Because you’re not on my basketball team, you’re not on my swim team, you’re not on my track team. You’re a fat kid who likes _reading _for God’s sake, and you’ll never be anything.”

Coach gets up, starts to walk away. And Ben feels a peculiar feeling. Just like the thought about Bowers, but this time good. He doesn’t recognize the people that pop into his mind, but he knows he knew them once. And he thinks:

_We were good together. We were losers, and nobody liked us, but goddamn it if we weren’t _good _together. We did something, something brave. I don’t know what it was, but I do know that Coach fucking Woodleigh couldn’t have done it. Hell, he’d piss his pants and start whimpering like a baby, and his hair would go all white, and his heart would stop dead in his chest, but that_ _didn’t happen to _us_, and that’s because we were good._

So Ben gets mad.

“Coach!” he calls with sudden force, and Coach turns to look at him.

“You say that you coach the track team?” Ben asks.

“Yeah.” Coach snorts. “Not that it’d mean anything to you.”

“You listen to me, you stupid stone-brained son of a bitch.” Ben doesn’t know what’s come over him, this is a _teacher, _but Coach’s mouth drops open and Ben realizes that, yes, this is a teacher, but this is also an _asshole, _and Ben needs to put him in his place.

“I’ll be going out for track once March comes around,” Ben continues, confidence, more confidence than he thought he could ever possibly muster, lacing his voice. “What do you think about that?”

Coach’s mouth flounders open and closed like a fish, until he finally seems to collect himself. “I think you’d better shut your damn mouth before I punch your teeth in.”

“I’m going to run down everyone else you’ve got out there,” Ben says, clenching his fists at his sides. “I’ll be better than all of them, better than your best, and once I show you all that I am, I’m going to want a fucking apology from you.”

Coach stares, hard, and for a second Ben thinks he’s really serious about punching his teeth in. “You just keep on talking, fatboy. The day you outrun my best is the day I quit my job to go back to farming corn on the circuit.”

He leaves.

Ben stares after him, breathing hard, no longer ashamed, and even though he’s going to be late for class, he can only think that he’s going to show this fucking asshole who’s boss. He’s going to go out and get fit, and when he does, Coach Woodleigh, and the guys, and _Aunt fucking Jean _won’t be laughing anymore.

So he starts with running.

Well, no. He _starts _with his mother.

When Ben tells Mama that he’s going to lose weight, she bursts into tears. She starts out with that same old song and dance of Ben not really being _fat, _just _big-boned, _but Ben fires back that he’s not big-boned, he’s _obese, _and that’s a problem.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Mama asks through tears. “What are you doing this to your poor mother for, Benny?”

Mama thinks he’s steady. Mama’s on her own. Ben is pretty much all she has. Of course she doesn’t want him to get skinny, it would be undoing everything she’s done for him.

“I’m not doing it for you, Mama,” Ben tells her. “I’m doing it for _myself.”_

Mama only sobs harder. Aunt Jean, lurking in the kitchen doorway and staring at them in the living room, looks stoic. Ben doesn’t know how _she’s _feeling, but she starts to serve him a steady normal rate of portions at meals, so maybe she’s supporting him, in her own terrible, selfish sort of way.

Ben ignores his Mama, even though he loves her. He loves her, but this is important to him. And then he starts running.

It’s hell at first. Ben will just take himself up and down the street a few times in the beginning, jogging along in a baggy hoodie and a pair of XXL sweatpants. It’s November, so the weather’s not too hot, but Ben still sweats like a pig after barely five minutes of running. He gets dizzy. By the end of his first jog, at a grand max time of fifteen minutes, thirty seconds, Ben vomits on the side of the road and then passes out next to the puddle of sick.

When he wakes up he feels woozy, but determination runs through his veins instead of blood.

The next couple of months go by slowly but surely. Ben might still puke when he goes out for his now longer runs, but at least he isn’t fainting anymore. And then after a while, he’s actually holding up his pants when he’s out jogging, because Mama is still in denial, and she refuses to buy Ben new clothes.

Ben supposes he could go out and buy his own clothing, but he thinks this approach is better. He’s showing her that he can do what he puts his mind to even without her support.

Mid-January

_(january embers)_

and Ben is getting slimmer and slimmer practically by the week. His shirts billow around him like sails, giving the appearance that he is shrinking rapidly in his clothing, but there is one good thing to happen. Mama has found out that if she makes Ben salads to eat, he’ll eat as much of it as he can. And she’s starting to warm up to the idea that Ben will eat a ton of portions of something, as long as it’s healthy. So she’s been feeding Ben so many salads that he wouldn’t be surprised if he grew a fluffy cottontail.

At first, Aunt Jean complains about all the “rabbit-food,” as she puts it. But Mama turns to her and says,

“Don’t you want Benny to get skinny? You’ve never given any other impression.”

And that shuts Aunt Jean up real quick. Mama may not be completely on board with the idea, but Ben loves her a little more that day.

Eventually, Ben moves from jogging around the neighborhood to taking his runs around the school’s track, but only on days that Coach isn’t doing his rounds outside. Even though it’s bitterly cold, Ben spends an awful lot of time out there, manages to do at least four miles on a good day.

By now the kids at school are noticing Ben’s changes in body mass. And while Ben still isn’t all-the-way perfectly thin, he’s lost a lot of fat, and made up for that fat in muscle. People start to pay attention to him now, far more than they ever used to.

The guys in gym seem angry, since they can no longer really pick on Ben for his weight. Instead they just act cold towards him, ignoring him in the locker rooms, and still picking him last for kickball out of spite. But Ben doesn’t mind; as long as the fat-paddling has stopped, he’s happy. And, hey. They never expected the fat kid to do something about his fatness. Maybe they’re just a little shocked.

Coach still yells at Ben during class, but there’s a deeper resentment there now. It’s not so much disgust anymore, it’s _hatred. _No, more than that. _Loathing._

Ben can’t wait for March.

In February, Mama finally relents and buys Ben new clothes, and for the first time in his life, Ben actually feels comfortable in them. He can wear _jeans _now, and if he wears a t-shirt, his tits don’t bulge out obviously anymore.

And then something that’s _really _never happened to Ben before, does. Well, no, maybe that’s not entirely true. He feels like it did _once, _but...it must have been a long time ago, since Ben can’t remember it at all.

Girls start to notice him.

It’s _odd. _The same girls who used to laugh as he waddled down the halls, and make whale noises when he spoke in class are now asking Ben to carry their books, looping their arms through his as he walks down the hallway, flipping their hair and giggling sickly-sweet whenever Ben so much as says hi.

Some of the boys suck up to him too, now that he’s all cool and interesting. The gym guys still keep a relative distance, but Ben is surprised to find that he is generally becoming _popular._

And he doesn’t like it. The friends that he has aren’t even really his friends, they’re just people who used to make fun of Ben who now either want to get into his pants or into his good books. Ben doesn’t like any of them. He pretends to. Plasters on a fake smile and goes to parties, feigns having fun when they drag him along to the East Side football games, but in reality, he’s only doing it because Ben is _nice. _Ben always tries to be polite, and this is his downfall, because now he can’t get _rid _of them all.

And yet, Ben Hanscom is a little bit happy. He’s lonely, even with the sudden burst of popularity, but he’s a little bit happy. He finally feels _good _about himself, about his body.

_I only wish the Losers were here to see it,_ he thinks, during one of his Saturday morning runs around the track.

Ben frowns. Who the hell are the Losers? They sound familiar, like some ancient relic of the past, but faintly so, hardly there at all.

And then he realizes that whoever these Losers are, they’ve been motivating him to do this whole thing since the beginning.

Maybe they’re the people he sees in his dreams. The owner of that silver bicycle, whoever used to walk down the corridor of the library with him, the beautiful girl with the January embers.

Ben is brought out of his musings by a single, tentative cough.

The culprit is a sandy-haired man, about Mama’s age, standing just inside the chainlink fence surrounding the field. He’s looking at Ben with a certain apprehensiveness in his eyes, and while Ben knows _stranger-danger _and all that, he finds himself jogging over anyway.

The man is familiar. Ben doesn’t know why.

“Good morning,” Ben says, panting slightly. “Can I help you with anything, sir? Need directions or something?”

The man shakes his head. Up close, the lines in his face are more prominent. Up close, his hair isn’t sandy, rather a dusty gray. He’s tired. And he’s old.

“No, no directions,” the man says. “I heard from someone that Benjamin Hanscom comes here for his runs. Do you know where I could find him?”

“Shouldn’t be too hard.” Ben sticks his hand out. “I’m Ben Hanscom. Nice to meet you.”

The man stares at Ben. He blinks. And then he shakes Ben’s hand gingerly, staring at their joined palms. “Yes...yes, I guess you _are _him. You look different. But you’d be almost a man, now, wouldn’t you?”

Ben frowns. “I’m sorry, do I know - ?”

And then he gets it. Why the man knows who he is, why he seems so familiar to Ben.

“Oh my God. _Dad?”_

Liam Hanscom smiles thinly. “Yes, that would be me.”

Ben’s jaw literally drops. “You - uh - what, what are you doing here? I thought you lived out in Phoenix with, with...um...”

“Mallory,” Liam supplies. “And yes, I do. But I’d heard you’d moved here with your mother, and, well, it’s been so long, hasn’t it, Ben? I had to see you, because I couldn’t just pay child-support without ever seeing my boy again. And you’ve grown, you look..._different, _and so I decided to come up here, just for a bit, just to see how you’ve been.”

Ben blinks. “Oh. Does Mama know?”

Liam grimaces. “No, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell her, Ben. I can...I can speak to Arlene on my own.”

“Ok.”

Liam sits on a nearby bench, leaving Ben no choice but to join him.

“So,” Ben says. “How’s Arizona?”

“Not so bad,” Liam answers, shoving his hands in the pockets of his trench coat. “Not so bad. Mallory is fine, we’ve got a nice house, and you’ve got a couple of half-siblings.”

“Seriously?” Ben asks, whether in incredulity or anger, he doesn’t know. Liam doesn’t seem to notice. He pulls out his wallet and shows Ben the pictures inside of it.

“That there is Vivian,” he says, pointing to a small blonde girl on a tricycle. “She’s almost seven. And there,” a school picture of a boy with glasses and a bored expression on his face. “is Jason. He’s thirteen.”

Ben only nods, unable to speak because he just found out he has _half-siblings, _one of whom has been around long enough to be a _teenager._

“You must’ve had him pretty soon after you left Mama,” Ben says.

Liam sighs. “Yes. Part of the reason I left your mother was because Mallory was already pregnant at the time.”

“Wait, really?” Ben asks. “You got her pregnant while you were still - “

“Yes,” Liam interrupts uncomfortably. “And I’m not particularly proud of that.”

Ben isn’t particularly proud of _Liam. _Who he can’t even call his father anymore, because he never really has been.

“Why are you here, Dad?” Ben asks.

“Well...” He turns to look at Ben. “Benny, you’re what? Seventeen?”

Ben nods.

“You’re almost an adult. And, well, once you turn eighteen, you can live wherever you want. Your mother no longer has custody over you. So, I was hoping you might want to come down to Phoenix, and stay with me and Mallory? You know, a change of pace. Get to know Vivian and Jason.”

Ben isn’t sure what to say. “Dad...you know that - “

“Arizona has some great colleges,” Liam says, ignoring Ben. “Great colleges, Benny, and Mallory and the kids would love to meet you, I know they would. You could get out of Omaha, and come get to know _me, _Ben, I’m your _father, _for Christ’s sake. Your mother will be fine with her sister, and you can visit her whenever you like. But I’m your father, Ben. Think about it.”

Ben’s jaw clenches. He couldn’t do that, not to Mama, not to himself. He wants to _stay _in Omaha, he doesn’t want to go to Phoenix, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to meet Mallory. The kids, maybe, but not Mallory.

Ben’s pretty sure he’d be comfortable if he never moved again. He’s been doing that too much.

How is his father just _sitting here_ expecting Ben to say yes, like he didn’t just casually waltz into Ben’s life after _thirteen years, _asking Ben to go home with him? It’s not a thing a good father would do, _should _do. He’s walking all over Ben, trying to coax him into giving him what he wants.

Well, Ben’s pretty tired of letting himself be walked all over.

“No,” he says, surprised at the harshness of the word.

“What?”

“I said _no, _Liam,” Ben snaps. “I can’t just leave my whole life behind here. This is my _home,_ this is where Mama is, I’m not going with you just because you were finally brave enough to come and talk to me, your fucking _son._”

Liam looks astonished. “Benjamin, there’s no need for - “

“You know what?” Ben says. “You’re wrong, Liam. You _aren’t _my father. If you really were, you wouldn’t have walked out on me and Mama. You wouldn’t have never come to see me. Hell, you never even so much as _called. _I haven’t seen you in over a decade, and you think it’s ok to come here and ask me to live with you? Where have you _been_ all my life, Dad? Where were you when I really needed you?”

Liam licks his lips. “Ben, I - “

“I’m going to ask you something, Liam, and I bet you won’t be able to answer it, but here it is: What do I want to be when I grow up?”

Nothing.

“Come on, _Dad, _answer the question.”

“Ben, as a child you never - “

“An architect. I’ve wanted to be an architect for as long as I can remember, and I definitely did when you were still around. Maybe you would know that if you weren’t such a shitty excuse for a father.”

Liam looks hurt. “Ben!”

Ben stands. “Look, I’m going to keep running. And I think you should leave. Talk to Mama if you want to, or don’t, I don’t care. But I don’t think I ever want to see you again. Tell Vivian and Jason hello from their big brother. I’m sure they’re lovely. And if they ever want to meet me, you tell them that’s just fine, but you? Mallory? I don’t want either of you in my life, and I don’t _need _you in it, either.”

And with that Ben jogs away.

By the time he laps back around, Liam is gone. When he gets home, Mama doesn’t mention anything about him coming to call. And Ben doesn’t tell her a thing about the conversation he’d had with his father.

_Maybe I was too harsh._

_No, no I wasn’t. He was never there for me. He got what he deserved, and he can take _that _to the bank._

And one month later, when Ben beats all the other boys running for track, and Coach Woodleigh is mad enough it looks like he might start charging at Ben like an angry bull, Ben just smirks.

“Enjoy your corn picking, Coach. And don’t worry, I don’t want to be on your damn team, anyway. But I want you to remember this moment, you son of a bitch. I want you to remember this moment, and remember to never underestimate a fatass kid who means what he says.”

And Ben walks off the field, laughing like crazy.

A week later, he gets a schedule change. The section marked _Physical Education _has now been changed to _Creative Writing, _and on the space below, in Coach’s messy and angry handwriting are the words, _Excused indefinitely._

Ben doesn’t mind. Ben doesn’t mind that one bit.

After that, things seem to move in a bit of a blur. Ben finishes up junior year. He spends his summer working at the Sears at East Side Mall as a cashier, where the customers he has to deal with are not worth the pay. Once senior year rolls around, Ben tells his Mama that he wants to go to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, because of the architectural program there, and she sighs a little and tells him that’s fine, but he’ll have to help her raise the money.

And Ben gets a girlfriend. It’s not really something he _wants _per se, but it happens anyway. Sadie Holland, from Ben’s literature class, asks him out one day during lunch, blushing furiously while she does it, and Ben can just tell she’s feeling embarrassed, and was probably put up to it by her friends on a dare. She looks a little like she wants to melt into the ground, and Gavin Frazier (who is an _asshole_) starts laughing at her, so Ben says yes.

Sadie’s nice and all, but Ben feels like he’s making a mistake. He wouldn’t say he doesn’t have _feelings _for her, she’s very pretty and kind, and Ben likes that she’s very patient with others. Ben does like her, but he sort of feels like it’s not as much as he _could. _Like Ben has the capacity to like someone else more, maybe even _love _them, and he’s betraying them by dating someone else.

But Ben’s never really had a crush in his life that he can remember, so how can that be true? And if this fantasy person who pops into his head sometimes is destined to be his soulmate, then he’ll meet them eventually, won’t he?

But something seems to tell him that he already has.

Ben and Sadie go out for most of senior year, and people like them, and _Mama _likes Sadie, which Ben supposes is good. Sadie and Ben kiss a lot, but never anything past that. Ben doesn’t think she wants to. He’s not sure if _he_ wants to, either.

After spring break, they break it off. They don’t have a fight or anything, but Sadie wants to go to NYU, and Ben’s staying instate for college, and a long-distance relationship is not what either of them wants, so they part good friends.

And then graduation is coming, and Ben is done with high school.

A week after school lets out, Ben moves into his dorm at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Aunt Jean is glad to see him go, despite him not being fat anymore, and Mama cries but she knows Ben isn’t far (only like, an hour away), and he’ll come and visit her as much as possible.

Ben’s roommate is a guy named Paul, and he takes one look at Ben, grunts, and swiftly moves to his side of the room to roll a joint. He doesn’t offer Ben a hit.

Classes are good. Classes are _great, _actually. Ben knows what he’s doing, knows what he _has _to do in order to become an architect, and his professors congratulate him, tell him that he’s going places. In high school, when a teacher says you’re going places, it’s usually a lie, false encouragement on the part of the job of the educator. When a college professor says it, you know you must be doing something right.

Ben also loses his virginity in college. It’s this girl at a party. Ben thinks her name is Kathy, or Casey, or something. She’s a little tipsy, Ben is only slightly buzzed, she asks him if he wants to go upstairs, and he thinks, _what the hell, why not._

It’s...fine. Ben wouldn’t call it great. Not that he has much to compare the experience to. He guesses it’s nice, but for his first time, it’s probably not _amazing._

And then there’s the part of Ben that thinks it’s wrong, though he isn’t sure why.

That’s the only time Ben has sex at university.

And finally, after countless sleepless nights, and work with more effort put in than anything he ever did in high school, plus a couple of years of his life, Ben is graduating college with a Master’s in Architecture.

It’s almost immediate how fast he becomes a success. He doesn’t quite understand it. Only a year after he graduates, people at the company he works for are seeing his ideas and loving them, and asking for his input on big buildings, and then Ben is rising up and up until he decides he doesn’t want to go any higher, and he leaves the company, to start his own, Hanscom Enterprises.

Ben gets older and older. And he builds and builds. He builds bridges and office buildings. Houses and skyscrapers. More people start to ask for him. His name becomes pretty well-known, in the architecture business at least. But people praise the house he builds for his mother when the Parkinson’s gets bad and she needs a place to stay, since Aunt Jean has long since been dead. Ben builds a wonderful place out near Omaha, with angles and big windows and a stream running around it, calls it Golden Hour for the way that the sun slants across it just so at the right time of the evening, and people love it. Ben’s not sure if he would call it his Fallingwater. It’s not quite that. But he _is _proud of it, and Arlene Hanscom lives there comfortably until she dies.

In 2006, Ben is asked to design a communications tower for the BBC in London. It’s only once it’s finished being built that Ben realizes that the great glass tower is really that enchanting corridor at the Derry Public Library, just turned on its side.

The media ranges from calling the tower “Mr. Hanscom’s finest achievement yet, and we’d be damn surprised if he ever builds anything better,” to saying that it’s “essentially a Pandora’s box that nobody wants to open, and nobody ever should.” Ben doesn’t care what people think. It’s not his tower. It is, in a funny way, Barbara Starrett’s tower, and Ben hasn’t thought about her in...

In a long time.

Once Mama passes away, Ben takes over living on his own in Golden Hour. He can’t bear to see it left empty, with no one in it, but he doesn’t want to let just anyone inside, or (God forbid) turn it into a walk-in museum. So he lives there on his own, with no one but his dog, Atticus Finch, and he hardly even notices that it’s lonely anymore. He’s always been lonely.

He’s used to it.

Ben gets a call from Phoenix, Arizona one day, and while he doesn’t want to talk to his father, he answers it anyway.

It’s Mallory, calling to tell him that Liam Hanscom has died, and she knows that they weren’t on good terms, and she knows that Ben is a big successful architect, but would he please come down to the funeral, for family’s sake?

Ben tells himself to say no, but he goes anyway. He isn’t grief-stricken or anything. Liam wasn’t around enough for Ben to feel particularly devastated. But he’s sad, just a little.

And he’s empty.

The funeral is a quiet affair. Not many people recognize Ben for who he is, because he doesn’t have _celebrity _status or anything. Mallory is polite, though Ben still can’t forgive her, and knows he never will. He finally meets Vivian and Jason, both with their own families. They seem highly uninterested in him, only speaking to him when made to, although that’s probably fair. Their dad just died.

Ben’s dad just died, too. Or rather, someone who masqueraded as a father for Ben has just died, and Ben has been left to pick up the pieces.

He goes home. Builds more buildings. Makes more money. Still doesn’t have a Fallingwater yet, not even the damn communications tower, and at this point he’s wondering if he ever will.

Ben’s rich. He’s relatively famous. He can pay all his bills, he can have anything he wants. He’s thin now, his mother died happily, and everyone loves his work.

He isn’t happy.

It’s only when he’s going through the old things packed away in the attic, the things that Mama held on to for sentimentality’s sake, that Ben finds the yearbook page in a box marked **BENNY’S DERRY THINGS.**

In the box are a few comic books, a Derry Tigers sweatshirt, some movie ticket stubs, a library card with Ben’s fat childish face on it. These things cause a few images to flicker through Ben’s brain, but those thoughts are pushed aside when he finds the paper, tucked between the pages of a copy of _The Outsiders._

It’s folded neatly into fourths, and slightly yellow with time. The paper is grubby, like Ben had spilled coffee on it or accidentally dropped it in a mud puddle, but the faded blue writing is still clearly legible.

The writing says _Beverly Marsh, _in a child’s messy scrawl, and Ben doesn’t know who that is, but he wishes he did.

There’s hearts drawn under the name. Ben’s pulse quickens at the sight of them.

He doesn’t know the significance of this paper to him, or why he has it. He doesn’t know who this girl is, or if he ever knew her at all. He must have if she signed the page. Ben stares at the signature for a long time, how long he doesn’t know, and when he finally forces himself to go downstairs because the light is getting low, he tucks the page into his wallet subconsciously.

Beverly Marsh is like a name out of a dream, a name on the tip of Ben’s tongue, and Ben wonders if maybe she’s the redheaded girl he thinks about sometimes, if she’s one of those _Losers, _if she’s January embers.

_My heart burns there, too._

Ben doesn’t know what that means. He doesn’t know what that means at all. He never makes the connection between the girl on the yearbook page to the Beverly Marsh of Rogan & Marsh Industries, who tailor all of his fancy suits for his big board meetings. And he never dates, never marries, nothing outside of one or two one-night stands, because he just doesn’t feel a _connection _with anyone.

When Mike calls, Ben drinks. He doesn’t remember everything, but he remembers far more than he ever needed to. Than he ever _wanted _to.

He remembers the Losers, though. He remembers them, at least.

He remembers Bev. He remembers Bev before everything else, and he is filled with such heartache and longing and lost love, all of that on top of the fear and the fact that he’d forgotten his entire childhood, that he drives down to the Wheelhouse, slides Ricky Lee two twenties, and gets drunk.

He gets as drunk as he can, which is not at all, but he drinks anyway. He thinks what’s keeping him sober is the pure _fear, _but fear of what, he does not know.

On the way back from the bar, driving home even though, by all logical accounts, Ben should be passed out in the parking lot, Ben fumbles for the knobs on the dashboard, punches the button for the radio. He lands on an eighties hits station, whether accidentally or on purpose, and as the last few bars of “Rosanna” fade out, the song that comes on next wrenches an immediate sob from Ben’s throat.

“Please Don’t Go, Girl.” Ben hasn’t heard this song in forever. In fact, he’s not sure he’s really listened to New Kids On the Block in...twenty-seven years, possibly.

Ben finds himself pulling the car over to the side of the road, and just fucking sobbing. Sitting there with the radio blaring a song he hasn’t thought of in years, stirring up feelings he’d actually _forgotten _about feeling.

This song playing now can’t be a coincidence. Maybe it’s Derry, fucking with the radio station, trying to slice Ben open, raw and exposed.

Well, it’s fucking working. Ben cries for a very long time, overcome with emotion.

By the next day, when he’s catching his flight to Maine, and a storm is brewing in his head, a storm of memories, both good and bad, Ben knows that even if he dies in Derry, he won’t be alone.

The Losers will be there with him.

_Bev _will be there with him.

Golden Hour is still Ben’s home, but he is no longer alone in it.

It still feels a little empty, though maybe that’s because of what they’ve done.

IT is gone. For real, this time.

Bev is here. She’s ok, she’s real, she’s _here,_ and she’s not leaving. Ben’s not leaving either.

Ben feels like crying. For so many reasons. For Bill. For Mike. For Richie. For Bev.

For Stan and Eddie, most of all. There’s two gaping holes in Ben’s heart where they should go, and Ben’s felt grief before (for Mama) and no grief when he probably should have (for his father), but nothing like this. Never anything this intense, this harrowing, this soul-crushing.

But he isn’t alone. God, he isn’t _alone,_ because Bev’s here with him.

Ben’s so in love with her. He’s so in love with her. He’s so in love with her, he fears he may die.

And Beverly feels the _same, _and Ben might _really_ die because of that.

Because now he gets to wake up to her smile in the morning. He gets to cook her breakfast, and write her poems upon poems (though they both agree they’ll never be as good as the first one), and make her laugh, and hold her tight, and kiss her lips, and look at her hair in the sunlight that gave the Golden Hour house its name, and love her, love her, love her.

But there are also the times where one or both of them wake in the middle of the night, shivering and crying, caught in the throes of memories of Derry, or memories of Eddie and Stanley, or, in Bev’s case, memories of _Tom, _of her father. Those are the times where Ben pulls Bev close to his chest, strokes her back, and whispers into her hair. The times when Bev sobs and Ben sobs too, and they hold each other until they calm down and drift off back to sleep.

Ben can only imagine how the others are feeling right now. Bill with Audra, who’s got some fresh trauma from being caught in the deadlights, and who may never be the same again. Mike, who moved down to Florida but is checking in on Patricia Uris in Atlanta, trying to provide her with an explanation as to why her husband did what he did. Richie, who’s...

Jesus, Richie’s completely alone.

And they all meet up as much as possible, or at least, they try to. It’s a little hard when you live all across the country, and in Bill’s case, on another continent entirely, but they do their best. Because Losers stick together. Even if they weren’t like they once were, they’ve got to stick together.

Ben takes Bev out in his boat, for a quick trip off the coast of California. He invites Richie, but Richie declines. Ben misses the days when Richie would crack a joke, would call him "Haystack Calhoun" fondly. Ben thinks that Richie might never be completely the same ever again.

Will any of them?

But the trip is nice, sailing around the Pacific with Bev and Atticus Finch (who absolutely adores Bev), going for swims in the ocean and waking up early to watch the sunrise. They watch the sunrise a lot, and the way it glints off of Beverly’s hair makes Ben fall more in love still, if that’s even possible.

“How did you sleep?” he asks, sitting next to her and patting Atticus on the head.

“I slept well,” Bev replies, and he can see a real smile on her face. “I had a beautiful dream.”

Ben grins at her. He leans over to kiss her, stopping just before their lips touch.

“Can I?” he asks.

Bev smiles. “You don’t have to ask, love.”

So he kisses her, and each time he does it feels as if it were the first time, bonfires roaring behind Ben’s eyelids and blood pounding in his ears.

It’s a rush, and he loves it. Loves Bev.

“I always loved you,” he whispers against her lips. “Even when we were kids. It wasn’t just a crush it was...it was more than that.”

“I know. When I read your poem for the first time, part of me wanted it to be Bill, but...more of me wanted it to be you, I think. I think a part of me always knew it was from you.”

“Must have been hard,” Ben says jokingly. “To know the fat boy was in love with you.”

Bev frowns slightly. “No, love, it wasn’t hard. I don’t care what you look like, Ben, I still love you. I still loved you then, and I still love you now, and I’m never going to stop loving you, no matter what. That’s a promise.”

Ben feels like he might cry. “Bev...even when I couldn’t remember you, I was still in love with you.”

“Yes,” Bev murmurs. “Me too.”

She kisses him again, and Ben understands what he should have understood long ago. Bev doesn’t care if he’s fat. Bev doesn’t care if he’s a pushover. Bev doesn’t care if he lives in a big house with no one to share it with, if he’s been waiting for her for twenty-seven years without even knowing it. Because she loves him. She’s a Loser. Ben’s a Loser. They all are. None of them care about those things, because they’re just like Ben.

Ben knows now that his Fallingwater is not a place. It’s not a house, or a communications tower, or a library corridor made of glass.

His Fallingwater is a people. The Losers. Beverly.

And he’ll never, ever let them go. Not this time. He loves them too much for that.

_They _love _him _too much for that.

**Author's Note:**

> guys. guys. benverly. holy shit.


End file.
